Asphalt crack filling is a labor intensive, costly, and challenging activity. Conventional approaches to asphalt crack filling are time consuming, unpredictable, and generally yield repairs that are sensitive to failure. Most asphalt crack filling approaches provide an incomplete crack fill, providing a number of voids, exclusions, and/or unfilled spaces making the crack susceptible to decay or deterioration from moisture or sinking. Typical asphalt repairs also have highly variable adhesion characteristics and require, for best performance, application at temperatures at or above 400 degrees Fahrenheit (F). Also, many asphalt (crack filling and/or repair) mixes, especially polymerized mixes, are difficult to work with (e.g., difficult to rake, shovel, clean, etc.) and are hard to compact with rollers to an optimal density.
As can be appreciated, traditional asphalt crack filling mixes suffer from low crack repair strength, unyielding adhesive properties which are difficult to clean or remove from tools and equipment, unpredictable fill characteristics, and in some cases unworkable material characteristics. In addition, conventional asphalt crack filing methods require high operating temperatures (e.g., to bring the asphalt crack filling mixes into a workable state), labor intensive filling and application operations, complex cleaning operations after application, high operating costs associated with heating and applying the mix material into cracks, and the costs associated with replacing tools that cannot be sufficiently cleaned, etc.